The solemn ceremony was over. The body of the great king had been borne forth from the apartments in which he had governed Prussia for so many years; from the house which had been his chief delight on earth, and which was thenceforth to stand as a monument of his life. But the deceased king's commands and wishes were disregarded in the very beginning. And it was made manifest to the world that his successor did not intend to walk in his footsteps, and did not share his independent views on religious subjects, and his freedom from all prejudices. Frederick had caused a burial vault to be built for himself on the terraces. He desired that his body should find a last resting-place in the garden which he had made, and near the house in which he had lived with his friends, and in which he had been so happy! But his successor considered such a resting-place, in the temple of Nature, and under the dome erected by the hand of the Almighty, an unfit abode for the remains of a king. He considered the temple of brick and mortar erected by the hand of man a far more worthy receptacle for the dead monarch. The philosopher of Sans-Souci had not attended church for many years; and now, as if to proclaim to the world that a revolution had taken place in Prussia, the king's body was deposited in the church. To the Garrison Church in Potsdam, where the plain and unadorned coffin of King Frederick William the First had been placed in the vault under the altar, the gloomy funeral procession of the dead ruler wended its way on the evening of the eighteenth of August. His generals and officers, the magistrate of Potsdam, and the members of his household, followed the funeral car. But his successor, King Frederick William, and the princes and princesses, were not present. In solitude, as he had lived, King Frederick descended into the dark vault in which the coffin of his father awaited him. In life, they had kept at a distance from each other; death now brought them together, and their mortal remains lay side by side in peace and tranquillity. Death reconciles all things; in his hands even kings are but as the dust of the earth. On the morning after Frederick's interment, King Frederick William repaired to Sans-Souci, where the opening and reading of the monarch's will was to take place. The royal princes, who had not accompanied the king's body to its last resting-place, were by no means absent on this momentous occasion, and Princes Henry and Ferdinand, and even the Princess Amelia, Frederick's sister, who was decrepit from age, and deformed by the mental and bodily anguish she had undergone, had come to Sans-Souci to be present at the reading of the will. These three were standing in an alcove, conversing eagerly, but in an undertone. Their manner was expressive of resentment and anger, and the glances which they from time to time cast toward the door through which the king was expected to enter, were full of hatred and derision.